Soucy bolsters Central Catholic's Super 8 dream

By Matt
Williams

Central Catholic’s Colin Soucy turned back
85 of 92 shots in a three-game series loss to St. John’s
Prep last season.

The folks at Central Catholic in
Lawrence, Mass., believe they have the Bay State’s best high
school goaltender, and with a pretty good team in front of him, a
chance to win the school’s first Super 8 championship.

Anyone that followed last
year’s Super 8 would be hard pressed to disagree.

Colin Soucy was one of the
breakout stars of last year’s tournament, stopping 114 shots
in four games, including 85 of 92 in a three-game series loss to
top-seeded St. John’s Prep.

Now a senior, Soucy’s
focus is on one thing: Helping the Raiders make a fifth straight
appearance in the Super 8, the top-tier Massachusetts high school
hockey tournament that’s played out among the state’s
top 10 teams.

“I’m really excited.
It’s been anxious waiting for that first game. We’ve
been looking forward to this all summer and all fall, playing with
each other,” Soucy said before Central’s season opener
in December.

“Our goal is to win the
Super 8. We were pretty much a goal away from the semis last year,
and we have a very similar team. Getting back to that point
motivates me every day.”

At 6-feet tall, Soucy, a
17-year-old from North Andover, has good size in net and even
better quickness. He has a very strong glove hand, and the kind of
positional awareness in his crease that make tough saves look
easy.

It’s the sort of mentality
that’s developed over years of practice both on and off the
ice. Soucy has faith in his ability to read the play and has worked
to trust the way he’s been taught to play, which keeps him in
position for big saves and possible second shots.

“If you play the puck the
right way, it’s going to hit you,” Soucy said.
“At the same time, if you have to sprawl out to make the
stop, you have to be ready to do that.”

A student of Stop It
Goaltending, Soucy spent the summer honing his flexibility and
fitness. He’s hoping to be even better in 2013-14 than he was
last year, when he posted 15 wins, a 2.13 goals-against average and
a save percentage north of .920.

“You have to be
technically sound, but you can’t get better technically
without strength,” Soucy explained, citing the power needed
to push across the crease to make a stop.

“To get better, you work
on speed, quickness and agility. You can’t go into a season
without having worked out, and in the summer we’re in the gym
more than we’re skating. Both are really
important.”

Soucy says Henrik Lundqvist of
the New York Rangers is probably his favorite goalie.
Stylistically, however, he hopes to emulate one of the Bay
State’s best ever, Cory Schneider (Marblehead, Mass.) of the
New Jersey Devils. Schneider is also a Stop It alum, and his cool,
easygoing demeanor in net made an impression on the senior at
Central Catholic.

“I’m modeling him.
He started out with Brian Daccord as a young (goalie), sort of like
I did, and now he’s one of the top stars in the NHL,”
he said. “He’s great to watch. He makes things look
easy, but he can make amazing saves when he has to.”

Soucy relishes watching his
close friends, like Joey Daccord at Cushing Academy and fellow
Mass. high school goalie Elijah Harris at Austin Prep, play. Going
against his goaltending brethren is always fun, too.

He’s a team-oriented
netminder. As any goalie would, he loves shutouts, but he’d
be happy to win a game 5-4, too.

“A win’s a win, but
I’d never be thrilled giving up four goals,” said
Soucy. “In a game like that, I’d be happy to win. But
I’d also have to go back and look to see how I could be
better to maybe make it a 5-1 or 5-2 game for us.”

Soucy played junior hockey when
he was a sophomore and returned to the high school team for his
junior year last season. He opened the year with an 18-save
shutout, one of two he collected in 25 starts.

Soucy showed remarkable
consistency throughout the season, allowing two goals or fewer in
17 of those starts. He was at his best in the postseason, stopping
29 shots in a win over Hingham in the Super 8 “play-in”
game. Central then lost a best-of-three against St. John’s to
end the 2012-13 season.

This year, the Raiders come into
the season ranked in the top five in Massachusetts, with Soucy
garnering a couple of preseason All-State nods. Central has to
replace graduated top defenseman Nick Gorski and has an offense led
by returning budding star Lloyd Hayes.

Central Catholic is one of the
top basketball schools in Eastern Mass., having won a North
sectional title last year and a state title in 2010. The Raiders
also won Massachusetts’ Division 1 state football title this
fall, and the hockey players feels like it’s their turn.

They’ve even had a taste
of Central’s “Red Sea,” as the school’s
rabid and boisterous student fan section has come to be known.

“Of course we love those
crazies,” Soucy said. “Playing in front of more than
one thousand fans, it always energizes you. It’s a lot of fun
to make a save and hear that roar from your fans or the surprise
from the other fans. You feed off it.”

With a clear foundation in
place, and a rock between the pipes, Central is hoping to feed all
the way to Massachusetts’ top honors next March.